


midnight intervention

by psycheDahlia



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Ableism, Bets & Wagers, Blood, Breaking and Entering, Cigarettes, Learning Disabilities, M/M, Marijuana, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Minor Injuries, Nosebleed, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Smoking, canon-typical fatphobia, or at least accusations of ableism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-05-07 01:50:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14660820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psycheDahlia/pseuds/psycheDahlia
Summary: “The bet said that all losers would have to switch which bed they sleep in,” Dee explains.“Horrifying, frankly, that we five adults only have two beds between us,” Dennis says, “but continue.”(As the result of a lost bet, Charlie and Dennis have to spend one night alone together)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [howlinglight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/howlinglight/pseuds/howlinglight) in the [SunnyRarePairs2](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/SunnyRarePairs2) collection. 



> title comes from "sit next to me" by foster the people
> 
> Prompt:
> 
> “It’s fine.” Charlie shrugged. “I’ll just sleep on the couch.”
> 
> “What? No way,” said Dee. “That isn’t fair!”
> 
> “Yes it is,” said Dennis. “That was the bet. You guys lose, you switch places for a week.”
> 
> “My place isn’t on the couch,” said Dee. “If I have to live his miserable life for a week then he’s going to live mine. If Charlie’s sleeping here, he’s sleeping with you.”
> 
> (You don’t have to use that dialogue! Any rating is fine, but I do have a soft spot for cuddling and shit. Mac can be there too or him and Old Black Man can have lost a bet to sleep under the bridge or something.)

**Philadelphia, PA  
**  
“Is he going to do it?”

“I think he’s really going to do it! Way to go Charlie! Way to...ooh, wait, no….yeah, no. That’s blood.”

**4:03pm**

“He’s bleeding?”

“Oh shit he is _bleeding_ bleeding!”

**On a Tuesday**

“Jesus Christ, Charlie, stop, stop it, just stop!” Dennis cries, sounding disgusted, but he’s instantly on his feet, reaching for a rag and physically tilting Charlie forward into it, rather than tilting his head back which was Charlie’s immediate go-to solution, to Dennis’s apparent horror. “C’mon, man...lean forward... _dude!”_

“It’s fine, it’s fine, man, I don’t need your nose cloth, I’m a simple dude, I don’t need any luxuries, I’ll just let it go down my throat and swallow it like a normal person,” Charlie insists, leaning up away from the rag, nose tilting up towards the sky like a shark fin out of water.

“You will absolutely _not_ just swallow it,” Dennis snaps, grabbing Charlie by the greasy strands at the nape of his neck and shoving that little shark fin right back down into the cloth.

“Like a normal person?!” Dee echoes in disbelief, looking to Mac, who joins in her bemused giggling. _“A normal person?!”_

“Wha...? That’s where my blood came from! I’m just putting it back!” Charlie wails as he squirms free from Dennis’s hold once again. Dennis makes an irritated sound. “Look, whenever I see my blood, I just suck on the wound, I suck out the blood, I swallow the blood, I eat it, it goes back inside me, I’m good as new! I don’t lose any blood at all, so it’s like nothing ever happened! What’s the problem?!”

Mac wrinkles his nose and half-pleads, “You’re not supposed to...don’t suck the blood out of your open wounds, Charlie!”

“Yeah, I really don’t ever want to see that,” Dee agrees.

“Seriously, Charlie, I will absolutely hightail it right out that door if you start scarfing down your own nosebleed blood!” Mac declares, the heavy sole of his boot audibly clunking to the ground, his body straightening up as he shifts his weight to his leg.

“Okay, okay,” Charlie mutters, taking the rag from Dennis, leaning forward into it and shooing Dennis away, who puts his hands up without protest and ducks behind the bar. “C’mon, don’t, like….come on,” Charlie addresses Mac, who’s still shifting uneasily. “Just sit down.”

“So now that that’s settled, what’s our verdict then, guys?” Dee asks as Mac climbs back up onto his stool. “Did Charlie do it, or?”

Mac frowns, brow furrowed in thought. “I didn’t actually have the best angle.”

“Dennis?”

Dennis stands back up from behind the bar, handing Charlie a rushed, messy attempt at an ice pack. “Here, Charlie, press this to your nose so it doesn’t swell up,” he says, then adds, “And I don’t know, Dee, I was too busy tending to our bleeding friend to keep count. Did anyone else notice that? That I was the only one who helped?”

“Did we notice you were suddenly front and center the second there was blood involved?” Dee rephrases. “Yes. Is that really the sort of thing you want to be, y’know, pointing out? Drawing attention to? That, I am less sure of.”

Dennis ignores her but sharp eyes could catch a slight flush to his neck, a vein shifting uneasily in his temple.

“I was counting,” Frank pipes in. Dennis half-jumps, looking startled.

“My god, Frank, I forgot you were even here,” Dennis chuckles. “Get up on a stool or something so we can see you, why don’t ya?”

It takes a little doing, but Frank wobbles himself up onto a stool eventually, kicking his legs, feet miles from the footrest. “I was counting,” Frank says again, and Charlie lifts his head from the rag, looking up at him inquisitively.

“You were?” Charlie asks. “Did I do it?”

“I’m sorry, Charlie,” Frank says, meeting Charlie’s eyes and shaking his head with a slight frown, “You were two shy.”

“Two shy?!” Charlie cries, flinging himself back from the bar, leaping to his feet. The rag falls, forgotten, to the surface of the bar, bloody side down. Red-tinted ice starts spilling out the side. “Just two? Aw, c’mon, Frank!” He cries, looking to Frank. Frank raises his hands with a sympathetic wince.

Charlie looks wildly around at the rest of the gang, not really settling on any of their faces for long. “Come on, guys, two shy? That’s closer than any of you could’ve gotten!” His wild movement gets his nose really and truly bleeding, dripping down onto his lips.

Dennis holds up a hand. “Now, I don’t think anyone’s disputing that, Charlie,” he says. He reaches the hand out, pats Charlie on the arm, “But that wasn’t the bet, Charlie, the bet was…”

“Yeah, we know what the bet was,” Dee snaps, “Goddammit, Charlie, two shy? You couldn’t have held out for two more?”

“I could’ve!” Charlie cries. Blood flies from his lips as he speaks, drips down his chin and stains his shirt. Mac recoils from the sight, looking slightly green. “Dennis told me to stop! And just cuz I started _bleeding?_  Come on!”

“Because it was like someone turned on a _tap_ in your _nose,_ Charlie! I...you’re a walking fountain of blood _right now_ , oh my god, sit down! Jesus!” Dennis shouts, grabbing Charlie by the chin once he’s close enough and half-smashing the rag into his face, wiping off blood that comes back just as soon as it’s removed.  “Do you think _maybe_ our betting has gone a _little_ far? Charlie’s nose might be half gone! I can’t even wipe the blood away quick enough to tell!”

“I don’t think his nose is what’s injured, Dennis,” Mac pipes in.

Dee nods, pointing one long, lime-painted nail in Mac’s direction, “You know, I was going to say that too, I think it’s just from the exertion.”

“Yeah, his nose was really never at any risk,” Mac explains.

“Besides,” Dee huffs, “why are you bitching about the bet? You won.”

“Because I care ab--wait, a minute, hold on a second, I won?” A grin spreads over Dennis’s face. “Oh, awww! That’s awesome, man! What did I win?”

“Well you didn’t really win anything,” Dee remarks, and Dennis frowns. “But,” she says, and Dennis lights up again, “you don’t have to share Frank and Charlie’s bed with Mac, Frank, and me.”

Dennis snorts, “Well jeez, that’s a relief.”

“Wait,” Charlie pipes up, putting his hand on top of Dennis’s to ease the cloth away from his mouth so he can speak, “where do I sleep?”

“No one cares,” Mac brushes him off.

Dee’s head snaps to look at him so fast it seems like she might get whiplash. “Well, I care! If I’m filling my part of the bet, so is he!” She casts an accusing finger at Charlie. "You're sleeping with Dennis!"

“Charlie?” Dennis says, squinting at Dee then glancing at Charlie, who looks up at Dennis just as confused before they both turn their confused looks on Dee. “Was he even in on the bet?”

“The bet said that all losers would have to switch which bed they sleep in,” Dee explains.

“Horrifying, frankly, that we five adults only have two beds between us," Dennis says, "but continue.”

“Right. Well, Charlie, Mac and I are the losers, cuz we all said Charlie could do it,” Dee continues.

“Oh, that’s right!” Mac says, bouncing his fists excitedly on the bar. “I asked you if you thought you could do it, and you said yes! That’s a bet! You bet, and you lost!”

“I’m the only winner?” Dennis beams. “Oh my god, that’s the best kind of winner to be!”

“No, I won too,” Frank says, pointing to himself. “I get to sleep in my own bed tonight, all comfy cozy.”

“Another night on your ancient, bedbug-infested futon,” Dennis snorts. “Wow, what a prize.”

“Yeah, well, that means I, shudder, get to share that futon with these two jabronis tonight,” Dee jerks a thumb in each direction to indicate Mac and Frank on each side of her, who both squawk much like the bird they often compare her to, “and you and Old Black Man get to share with Charlie.”

“Wait, I won, so I have to share with Charlie?” Dennis’s brow furrows. “That’s really not much of a prize.”

“Frank’s prize is to have to share his futon with an additional person, Dennis. You get to share your bed with one less person. Count yourself lucky,” Mac remarks, then glances at Frank. “ _Please_ tell me you at least cleaned the spot where you found that bird?”

“It’s easy enough to sleep around,” Frank insists, then shrugs, “Well, easy enough with just me and Charlie, anyway. And when you do brush up against it, you barely notice it. And if you do, it’s kind of nice. The feathers are soft.”

“I’m going to be sick,” Dee says, and true to her word her forehead is quickly going damp and the corners of her mouth pull like she’s about to dry heave. “I can’t believe I agreed to this, I’m going to be sick.”

Mac scoots away from Dee. “Well, there’s no rule against cleaning the bed up first, at least. Frank, take me over to your apartment so I can try and make it at least inhabitable enough that I don’t get a disease or get puked on by Dee.”

Frank grins widely. “I get to sleep in my own bed, and this moron’s gonna clean it for me? Haha! Score!” Frank hops off his chair and then struts cheerfully across the bar, pausing to make Mac open the door for him, which he does, albeit accompanied with an eye-roll.

Dee sighs into her beer as the door swings shut. “How is it, exactly, that Charlie’s the one who lost us the bet, and he’s staying the night in _my_ California king while I’m stuck in the apartment from _Trainspotting_?”

“Is that what made that movie memorable to you?” Dennis asks. “The uncleanliness of the characters’ homes?”

“I...I will admit, I have not seen _Trainspotting_ ,” Dee confesses, “but it just looks like the living situations in it would be pretty unpleasant.”

“They aren’t great,” Charlie says, pressing the ice to his nose again. “If I remember correctly, they’re, uh, they’re not great.”

“And that’s Charlie, saying that,” Dee remarks.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Charlie demands.

“That your apartment is filthy?”

“Oh!” Charlie laughs. “Oh, alright. I thought you were being insulting, but that’s just true. Alright, well, Dennis, shall we?”

“Shall we what?” Dennis asks.

Charlie wrinkles his nose, then winces and quickly un-wrinkles it, readjusting the ice to press against the area he’d just unwisely wrinkled. “Shall we go to your bed?”

Dennis furrows his brow, glancing at an equally confused Dee and then back to Charlie. “Charlie, it’s like four in the afternoon.”

“Yeah, what, uh, what time do we have to start being in the bed?”

“I don’t...bedtime!” Dennis cries. “Whenever that is for you! You just have to sleep there tonight, Charlie, that’s all.”

“Is that right?” Charlie asks, raising his eyebrows. “Alright, then. That’s really not much of a punishment. This,” he gestures at his still-bleeding face, “is a whole lot worse than sharing a bed with Dennis.”

“Thanks,” Dennis mutters, “Glad sleeping with me is marginally less awful than a gushing nosebleed.”

“He pretty distinctly said the nosebleed is a _whole lot_ worse,” Dee interjects.

Dennis laughs. “Fair point, I guess.” He turns to Charlie. “Alright, man, let’s go do our best to get you cleaned up in the bathroom.”

“Huh? Why?” Dee demands.

“You just said we weren’t sleeping yet,” Charlie protests.

“I...yeah, no, we’re not, but no one is going to buy beer from a guy looking like that, he’s grotesque!” Dennis remarks to Dee, gesturing at Charlie. “We’ve got a first aid kit in the bathroom, right?” Dee nods once in affirmation. “Right. I’ll get him fixed up and then, I dunno, maybe if there’s time we’ll come back and help you with the bar.”

“Well, it’s four, so,” Dee says, but she says it pretty lightly. “Wait, hang on, you’re just going to leave me here on my own?”

“I mean, kind of,” Dennis replies, but before she can protest Dennis interjects, “Or you can leave, if you want to. No one really cares what you do, Dee.”

Dee again looks like she’s about to protest, but then she shrugs one bony shoulder, left bare by her halter top. “Fair enough, boners. I’m chugging a few beers and then I’m out of here. Might as well enjoy my day as best I can, knowing that I’m spending tonight in whatever mess you call a bed.”

“It’s surprisingly comfy,” Charlie remarks over his shoulder, hopping up at Dennis’s gesturing and making his way toward the bathroom. “You should try the crevice.”

“Thanks!” Dee chirps after him. “I won’t!”

Once Charlie’s out of earshot, Dennis leans in and mutters, “Think I can convince him to take a shower first at least?”

Dee wrinkles her nose, glancing over at him, “Ohhh, god, I sure hope so. Did you catch that pot smell, when he was over here? How much weed do you think you’d have to smoke, to smell _that_ strong?”

“Pot smell?” Dennis echoes. “You think that’s weed, Dee? There’s no weed in the world that skunky. That kid has had a recent encounter with a real live skunk!”

“Oh man, you think so?” Dee asks, eyes widening. “Oh my god, please tell me you know how to get that off him. Please don’t get skunk smell on my mattress.”

“I still have some of the soap I bought Mac to deal with his atrocious fat-guy smell,” Dennis says, “I could try and get him to use that, assuming Charlie even knows _how_ to use soap.”

The men’s room door swings open and Charlie comes out, face still stained red but much of the carnage washed away. “Alright, Dennis, I think I need some help!”

“Great,” Dennis says, walking over towards Charlie. He pauses briefly, pointing to Dee. “Don’t kill Mac or Frank tonight!”

“Try not to,” Dee shrugs. Dennis shrugs back, so at least it’s a mutual apathy.

Dennis opens the door. Dee sees Charlie scratching at the dried blood in his beard, beaming as Dennis walks in. “Oh my god, Dennis, I forgot to tell you, you’ll never believe what animal I wrestled this morning!”

Dee perks up. “Wait!” she calls. “What anim…” She pauses mid-word, realizing. “Oh right,” she says, sitting back down and grabbing another beer. “Skunk.”

///


	2. Chapter 2

“...so he’s just laying there, I called out to ask if he was dead, he didn’t say anything for, like, a solid fork-night, so like, legally speaking, that means his stuff is mine now,” Charlie explains, continuing to tell the story Dennis had adamantly told him he didn’t want to hear as Dennis mops up the blood with a handful of wet paper towel.

“So I go over, I’m grabbing him by his, you know, his limp dead legs to roll him over and see if he’s lying on any treasure,” he continues.

“Just in case this skunk happened to die on top of some treasure,” Dennis clarifies, tilting his head to clean the blood from Charlie’s lower lip and pausing for a moment to stare, brow cocked.

Charlie shakes his head, only slightly, not wanting to displace Dennis. “No, dude, when an animal dies it lies on top of, you know, its stuff, it tries to shelter its most valued possessions, that’s just nature,” he says. He’s looking down at Dennis in slight disbelief, like there’s a part of him that can’t believe Dennis could possibly be so dumb. Dennis rolls his eyes and resumes cleaning.

“I flip the little dude over, and there’s nothing under him, so I’m getting kinda sad, because, like, that means he died with nothing to his name, you never wanna see that, cuz, like, that gets you thinking about, you know, life as a whole and the fragileness of things...but then I notice he’s looking at me _instead!”_

“Instead of what?”

“Instead of being dead, dude!” Charlie cries. “And I already had legal right to his stuff, so I was peeved about it! So I’m mad at him for not being dead, he’s mad at me for calling him out on it, we exchange a few words, he got _real_ racist, just real over the line stuff, and the next thing I know we’re wrestling, we’re tussling, we’re rolling down the street in a cartoon tumbleweed…”

“Maybe Dee was right,” Dennis mutters to himself, leaning back to survey his work while also working tirelessly in his mind to translate Charlie’s retelling of the events into a narrative that might even slightly resemble what actually happened. “Maybe some weed _was_ involved.”

“He gets a few _real_ good swipes in on me,” Charlie tugs his collar aside to reveal a series of red lines, not quite breaking the skin but irritated to all shit. “So I decide, you know, whatever treasure he might have, he’s doing so good at protecting it that I respect him too much to take it at this point anyway, so I decide to be a gentleman about all this. So I chucked him into an alley and ran before he got his bearings back!”

Dennis raises his eyebrows, a surprised laugh bubbling out of him as he tosses the handful of wet towel into the bin and turns on the sink. “That was...very gentlemanly of you, Charlie, that skunk’s gonna remember your, uh, uncommon levels of class and dignity.”

“Thanks, man, y’know, I appreciate that,” Charlie nods as Dennis scrubs Charlie’s blood out from underneath his fingernails, the stream of water turning pink. “Cuz, like, you know I’ll be thinking about him.”

“Sure,” Dennis nods, drying his hands. “Right. So hey, how are you doin’ there, pal?”

“Oh, I’m feelin’ much better, Dennis,” Charlie grins. “That stuff you rubbed my nose with was amazing, what was that?”

Dennis gestures to the sink he’d just turned off. “Just water, Charlie. The only thing the first aid kit had was a roll of gauze, an empty peroxide bottle, and an open, unrolled condom.”

“Oh, man, are you worried it was used?” Charlie asks, eyes wide.

“The condom? I...wasn’t, but I am now,” Dennis says, wrinkling his nose in the general direction of the discarded first aid kit. “So thanks for that.”

“Sure, sure,” Charlie nods. “See, now, I’m more concerned about the peroxide.”

Dennis gestures to him emphatically. “Okay, yes! That annoyed me too! What, we’re gonna just finish the peroxide and then put the empty bottle back?” Dennis gestures with his hands, shaking his head, baffled and horrified.  “That’s what we’re gonna do now?”

“It doesn’t even taste that good,” Charlie says, his tone and facial expression saying he’s agreeing with Dennis even though his words have clearly gone onto another topic altogether. Dennis’s brow immediately furrows. “So I don’t know who would…”

Dennis sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Charlie, you work in a bar. You have virtually unrestricted access to booze pretty much every hour of every day. Why in the world would you stoop to drinking peroxide?”

Charlie snorts, “Okay, first of all, if you think drinking peroxide is even in the same family as drinking booze, I don’t…”

“I don’t!” Dennis cries. “I don’t think that! I think they’re _very_ different!”

“...it’s a completely different buzz, it’s a completely different high, it’s…” Charlie reaches up and touches his nose, grinning excitedly. “Oh, hey, it stopped! Good work, Dennis!”

“Ah, that was mostly just clotting,” Dennis waves him off. “Stop, uh, stop fiddling with it though, we’re currently on course for you _not_ bleeding all over my bed. I really don’t wanna change that course, you feel me?”

Charlie drops his hand to his side with a solemn nod. “Right, sorry. Uh…” He pauses, scuffs his feet like he’s kicking stones, even though stones are one of the few things that _aren’t_ littering the bathroom floor. “I’m sorry you have to share your bed with me. I can sleep on the couch, we don’t have to tell Dee, I…”

Dennis waves him off. “No, come on, you don’t wanna cheat on a bet. It’s, like, bad karma or something. Nah, we’ll just chill for a while, and eventually fall asleep, right? No big deal.”

“No big deal,” Charlie agrees, examining his battered face in the broken mirror. He runs a finger along a thick, black crack in the glass, bisecting the mirror into jagged halves.

Smiling at him slightly, Dennis offers, “Hey, you wanna get out of here?”

//

A few hours later, Dennis jolts as Charlie’s arm suddenly comes into his peripheral. He hadn’t realized he’d spaced out quite that bad, but he feels like he was just startled out of a dead sleep. Charlie’s freckled arm is sweeping over the table, gathering the large quantity of empty shot glasses towards himself.

Dennis cracks half a smile. “Whatcha doin’ there, bud?”

Charlie holds up a finger and starts precariously stacking them. Not stacking them inside each other, but setting two right next to each other on the table and trying to balance a third where the two rims touch. The top glass, being a shot glass and thus flared at the top and weighted at the bottom, keeps tipping into one of the bottom glasses or the other. Charlie curses under his breath every time it happens.

Dennis reaches for the little container of sugars, not wanting to add one to his already-drank drink, but just to look at the labels. He pulls one of the pink ones out. _Sweet N Low_ . Classy establishment. Frank had made Dennis work at a shitty diner one summer during high school to “build character”, and theirs all just said either ‘sugar’ or ‘sweetener’, so he had to memorize: Blue Equal, yellow Splenda, pink Sweet N Low. It’s one of those things he hasn’t had to know for ages, but he ground so _aggressively_ into his brain that it’s still there.  

Glancing up from the sugars, Dennis is surprised to see that Charlie’s actually made some progress. If nothing else, Charlie’s a quick learner. Somehow he’s already gotten the hang of setting the glasses on top of each other, and is forming something similar to a house of cards, but with shot glasses. Dennis whistles low, impressed. Charlie grins at him.

“Excuse me,” a voice cracks through. Dennis and Charlie both turn to look at the waitress - not _the_ Waitress, just _a_ waitress, one of several waitresses at this particular bar, none of whom is the Waitress, who hasn’t had a job anywhere near a restaurant in a number of years now. “If you’re all set with those drinks I can get those glasses out of your way.”

“Oh,” Charlie says, “No thanks, no, they’re not in my way. I’m using them for something.”

The waitress leans into her hip. “Sir,” she says, “that is not appropriate use of the restaurant’s glassware, and the bar needs those to serve drinks to our other patrons. I’m going to take those now.”

Charlie wraps his arms around the glasses, protectively. He juts his chin out at the waitress derisively, like a petulant toddler. Dennis stifles a laugh behind a fist, hoping it’s mistakable for a sneeze.

 _“Sir,_ ” the waitress says again. Her hands are on her hips, and her traffic cone colored lipstick that ostensibly needs reapplying but truthfully just needs wiping off twists into a rude sneer. “I was very professional about it when I asked what cocktail you wanted and you ordered a ‘Completion.’” She makes the air quotes with her fingers. “I will _not_ be nearly as cool if you don’t give me my cups back.”

Charlie pouts into his glass hoard. “I read the menu wrong,” he mumbles, barely audible.

“Oh? Yeah? Did you?” she remarks derisively. Charlie swallows, thickly, eyes suddenly focused on the wall. He starts blinking a little fast, like there’s something in his eye.

And the waitress, well, that girl looks so _goddamn_ proud of herself for it. Dennis sucks on the inside of his cheek, glancing around surreptitiously, trying to think, because this cannot stand. He thinks, for a moment, about chucking all of the shot glasses to the ground and stomping on them, see how much the bar needs glasses _then_ , but he doesn’t want to wind up paying for shot glasses or running from the cops. He tries to think of something more subtle, glancing around for ideas.

The bar isn’t packed, but it’s considerably busy for a Tuesday evening. The age range skews kinda low - not “tweens with fake IDs” low, but “21-year-old college kids buying drinks for their 18-to-20-year-old friends” low. The lightbulbs they’re using in here definitely came in a box labelled “cool white”, making everyone look like they could use a little bit of sun, even more than everyone in here already looks like they could use a little sun. The place looks relatively recently renovated; there’s wood everywhere, but not like the building they bought was made of wood, like they looked at a couple places that didn’t have any wood at all and said “let’s put some wood there.” Dennis would bet money this place has bar trivia on at least one weeknight. He’d bet money on it being sitcom themed. He’d bet money on that sitcom being Friends.

He has an idea.

Dennis clears his throat and, in the most scandalized tone he can muster, cries out, in his best public speaking voice, “I’m sorry, are you trying to _bully_ my friend for having a _disability?”_

The restaurant doesn’t quite go silent and people don’t exactly whip around in their seats, because they’re in a bar, not a story someone clearly made up. But the people in the immediate vicinity who reasonably could’ve overheard Dennis go pretty noticeably quiet, people are doing that kind of side-peek (likely to see just how physically disabled Charlie is exactly in order to gauge their level of outrage, Dennis supposes) and he definitely sees a girl shush her friend from telling her an interesting story about her day at work so that she can eavesdrop on what this possibly ableist waitress is about to say to defend herself.

“Oh,” the waitress says, leaning off her hip and shrinking a little. The waitress, who is in her mid-thirties, is one of the older ones on staff. Dennis noticed this almost immediately. She looks at the other, younger servers, nervously. “Uh. No? I was just...”

“My friend here,” Dennis interrupts, in the presumptuous and self-assured way that only a white man who thinks he’s in the right can, “made an attempt tonight to read a word he had never seen before. That’s a brave thing, I think. That’s a hard thing to do. Charlie - and that’s his name, by the way, Charlie. He has a _name_.”

“I know he has a name!” the waitress snaps. The girl who shushed her friend’s story shakes her head. A server with purple hair and gauges whispers something to a server with a half-shaved bowl cut. The bowl-cut one shakes her head, too.

“Charlie here gets words wrong a _lot._ In fact, if I were Charlie, I might have stopped trying new words by now. I might just stick to the ones I know. Stick to the shorter ones at least. Rat. Bat. Cat. See Jane Run. Cat In The Hat. Shit like that.”

“But Charlie,” Dennis shakes his head, laughing softly to himself. He’s really going strong now. “Charlie just keeps on trying, god bless him. It’s like he doesn’t even know what shame is.” Dennis fixes the waitress with a look and repeats it, slow and pointed. “It’s like doesn’t even know _what shame is._ Until you came along, I guess. And _shamed him._ ”

The crowd Dennis has semi-captivated remains semi-captivated. There’s a table over by the door that’s trying to figure out what in the world is going on over here. There’s a table slightly closer that knows what in the world is going on that leans in to try and explain. The table even further over, the teenage daughter overhears and starts listening in to the explanation.

“Charlie saw a long word on that menu,” Dennis continues. “A _long_ word. How many letters is that?” Dennis counts on his fingers. “C-O-S-M-O-P-O-L-I-T-A-N. Twelve? I’m getting twelve. Twelve letters. And that’s not a word you see every day. Well, maybe if you work at a newstand.” That gets an honest-to-god chuckle out of no less than three people. People are desperate for entertainment. “Charlie’s not the best at sounding things out, especially when he gets flustered, but he knows his letters pretty good. There’s a C. There’s an O. And an M, a P, L, E, T, I, an O, and an N in that word. Almost in that order! Now how _many_ letters are there in that word, I wonder?”

“Ten,” one half of the couple sitting at the table directly across the aisle from them offers.

“Thank you,” Dennis says, gesturing to him. “Ten letters. So that’s only two letters off - and that accounts for the...S and the A, if I’m correct.” Dennis pauses, pursing his lips. “Hmm. Interesting. Two of the letters in the word _shame._ ”

“Look,” the waitress says, raising her palms, “I can see what you’re trying for here, and I can see about getting you an employee discount, or something, if you just…”

Dennis stands up. He stands up, and steps into the aisle, gesturing his arms into a broad arc, like he’s trying to draw a rainbow over his head. The restaurant really does sort of screech to a halt, because that’s too weird to ignore, but many of the patrons still adamantly avoid looking at him. “Folks,” Dennis says as he throws his arms around like a televangelist. “there is a stigma against disability in this country. There is a huge, massive, stinking, reeking, disgusting, atrocious…”

“You’re losing ‘em,” Charlie advises.

“Stigma,” Dennis finishes. “Against disability in this country. Especially mental illness. That’s the real shame. That’s what we should be ashamed of, is the _goddamn_ lack of empathy we have for the mentally ill.”

A couple people awkwardly applaud. “Thank you, truly, _thank_ you, but I’m not the one who deserves your applause. The one who deserves your applause,” Dennis gestures to the waitress, “is standing right here. This woman, whose cruel insulting of my brave disabled friend filled me with so much passion, so much _emotion_ , that I had to stand up and say something about it. Thank you, for making me confront this problem head on instead of continuing to take this sitting down. Truly. Thank you.”

“He was being so difficult,” the waitress says to the crowd. “Like, seriously difficult.” She’s not winning them over.

“His _life_ is seriously difficult,” Dennis spits back, his anger suddenly far more real and all-consuming that it had been. “You don’t even know. You don’t even _know_ him. But you judge him. And smirk at him. And _shame_ him. You don’t know him. You don’t care about him, like I do, like _we_ do.” Whether he means the rest of the gang or the rest of the restaurant isn’t quite clear.

“You don’t get to judge him for being difficult. If…” Dennis has to stop mid-sentence to snort out a laugh. “Lady, if the most difficult thing in your life is Charlie coming into your restaurant for a couple hours, your life is not hard enough for you to be shaming _anyone._ Okay? Charlie comes into my bar every fucking _day,_ lady, and let me tell you - that makes my life _better._ ”

Dennis has probably said too much. The people who had been looking at this waitress with anger and vitriol in their eyes are now looking at him and Charlie with the same sort of mushy look people get on their faces after someone publicly proposes, but before the other person says yes (because it’s a public proposal, of _course_ they’ll say yes in front of a crowd of judging strangers; it’s the best example of the usage of The Implication by the general public Dennis can come up with when trying to defend himself for using The Implication). Charlie, too, is looking up at him the way he looks at Frank after Frank suggests they play Night Crawlers.

“So,” Dennis says, clearing his throat. “I think you’ll understand if we don’t wish to pay our tab this evening.”

“I…” the waitress tries to protest.

Dennis leans in, gets right up in her face. He can’t remember what he’s eaten that day. He hopes his breath smells horrible.

“I guess you could say,” Dennis breathes into her face, “that our patronage at this restaurant has come to _completion_.”

“Lame,” the waitress says. “That’s a really lame line.”

“That was clever as shit, bitch, and you know it,” Dennis grins, “Charlie? Let’s go, buddy. Go somewhere people appreciate you for _who you are._ ”The restaurant doesn’t applaud, but a few people sort of nod appreciatively at that.

Charlie scoots out of the booth and ducks past the speechless waitress without really looking at her. Dennis shrugs into his jacket, winks at her, and walks a few paces behind Charlie. No one, server or patron, tries to stop them from leaving the restaurant, but every table they pass is silent and staring.

They stop, just outside the doors. Dennis fumbles in his jacket pocket for a cigarette, then offers the pack to Charlie.

“No thanks,” Charlie says, “I usually smoke Dee’s.”

“We smoke the same brand,” Dennis says, flipping the pack over and gesturing. “See? The little triangle shape there, and how it’s got this blue line near the bottom here? And it starts with a B, all the letters are the same size, kinda tall - that’s all the same as on Dee’s, right?”

“Right,” Charlie agrees, “But I mean, I usually don’t have my own cuz I forget it’s not a joint, and suck it into my lungs real hard and hold it in and shit, and just smoke myself sick on it. So I like sharing Dee’s better.”

“Oh,” Dennis furrows his brow. “Little weird, but okay then.” He slips one cigarette between his lips and then tucks the pack away, withdrawing his hand again with the lighter between his fingers.

“Huh,” Charlie says, squinting at something in the window.

“What?” Dennis asks.

“Nothing,” Charlie shakes his head. “I had to have read that ad wrong. No one would come to a bar to hear trivia about office stuff. ‘Oh, the stapler was made in this year.’ ‘Oh, copiers can be used to make a clone army, so be careful.’ No one would go to that.”

Dennis pauses for a moment, and then it dawns on him. He follows Charlie’s line of vision and confirms it when he sees the poster.

“Damn,” Dennis mutters to himself. “I would’ve absolutely bet money on it being Friends!”

“Trivia facts about friends?” Charlie wrinkles his nose. “That sounds terrible.”

“You’re not wrong about that, Charlie,” Dennis says, nodding sagely. “You are not wrong.” He lights the cigarette finally. “So what do you wanna do? Where do you wanna go from here?”

“Hm?” Charlie asks. “Oh, you were serious about that? You wanna go ‘somewhere people appreciate me for who I am?’ Uh...hmmm. We could go see my mom, I guess, or…”

“No, no, screw that,” Dennis brushes him off, then amends when he sees him getting angry, “Not! That your mom’s not great, Charlie, that’s just not...what I had in mind. We’ll just go somewhere you think is fun.”

Realizing what, exactly, a night of Charlie-style fun might entail, Dennis adds, “No skunks, though. Or rats. Let’s leave any and all vermin out of the mix entirely. Including stray cats. In fact, let’s just leave animals out of it. Yeah. I think that’s a good rule. No animals.”

“Okay,” Charlie nods, “Alright, yeah, I can work with that.”

“And it cannot be in, near, around, or pertaining in any way to the sewer,” Dennis adds. “Or, oh my god, or under that bridge. Actually, Charlie, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that, I don’t think you should be…”

Charlie shakes his head, smiling suddenly. “No, no, none of that. I have a good idea.”

Dennis nods, shrugging, passes the cigarette over to Charlie. He cannot imagine what the people inside the restaurant must think if they can see them through the windows - all that spectacle, and now they’re right outside the doors sharing a cigarette. “Yeah? You got one?”

“Yeah,” Charlie says, puffing on the cigarette. He coughs a little, just like he always did back in high school. “Yeah, I think you’re actually gonna really like this, Dennis.”

Dennis takes the cigarette back. “Well, you’re pretty lucky, Charlie.”

“What do you mean?”

Smoke streaming casually from his mouth as he speaks, Dennis grins, “Well, pressure’s off, right?”

“How so?”

Handing the cigarette back to Charlie, he offers, “No matter where you take me from here, you know for a fact we’re going to end up in bed together by the end of the night.”

Charlie ducks his head like that’s just how he smokes, but Dennis catches the blush he’s trying to hide. Dennis wonders why it makes him want to kiss him so damn bad.

That’s a thought for later, though. That’s a ‘later’ kind of thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a bit more of a slow burn than i expected to write but this is going somewhere specific i swear
> 
> also dennis and dee smoke a brand of cigarettes called "brezza", more on that here: http://psychedelic-iridescent.tumblr.com/post/175128428999/fun-fact-when-dee-drops-her-bag-in-hero-or-hate


	3. Chapter 3

The sun’s half gone down, and they’re walking through an old train yard. That’s the point when Dennis finally has to ask, “Charlie, do you actually have some idea of where we’re going, or are you just walking until you come up with an idea?”

Charlie stumbles slightly over a broken railroad tie; Dennis catches him by the elbow, wordlessly steadying him. Charlie gives him a grateful nod and replies, “I know where we’re going, Dennis, walking just takes time. We’re not all millionaires who can afford to go jalopying around from place to place in a car.”

“Jalopying?” Dennis glances down at his feet and mutters, “I definitely would’ve worn different shoes if I knew this is what we were doing.”

“Well, then it’s a good thing it’s time to sit,” Charlie grins.

Looking around in confusion, Dennis asks, “What? Sit where?”

Charlie jerks his chin in the direction of an open, empty boxcar, “Right there, dude.”

Dennis stares at Charlie in disbelief. “We came all this way to sit in a boxcar.”

“No, man,” Charlie rolls his eyes. “We’re not there yet. We’re just sitting for a second and having a smoke break.”

“What? Why?”

Charlie shrugs. “I dunno, cuz I always do?”

“Just cuz you always do?” Dennis shakes his head. “Charlie, we really don’t…”

Fishing a joint out of his jacket pocket, Charlie hops up and states, “Look, dude, you can smoke or not, but I’m not going any further til I smoke this thing, alright?”

“Oh my god,” Dennis breathes, throwing up his hands, “Fine. Just hurry up.” He fishes his phone out of his pocket and checks his messages.

MAC: _checkin n in ---- im still @ Charlie + Franks wru???_ (24 min ago)

He’d know it was Mac even without his name attached to the message - no one else he knows has thumbs too large for their phone screen while also always texting without looking at said screen and _also_ relying far too heavily on outdated text shorthand.

Dennis leans against the boxcar and types out a reply: _Who the fuck even knows. Charlie’s taking me somewhere._

Mac’s reply comes almost instantly.

MAC: _cool tr  y not 2 die_ . _his placei s sooooo grosss den :(_

“Who’s that?” Charlie asks.

“Mac,” Dennis replies. “He says your place is gross.”

Charlie waves him off. “That’s not news to me, man.” He raises an eyebrow at Dennis, holding up the joint. “You sure you don’t want any?”

Dennis ponders for a moment, then shrugs and pockets his phone. “Yeah, you know what? I will take a hit or two.”

He reaches for it, but Charlie pulls it away. “Ah,” Charlie says. “Nope. You gotta come up here. This joint is for patrons of this boxcar only.”

“Why?”

Charlie sighs. “Because this is where I _smoke,_ Dennis.”

“Fine,” Dennis goes to hop up but doesn’t quite make it. Charlie snorts and offers a hand.

“You really think you can pull me up?” Dennis asks.

Charlie rolls his eyes. “Uh, yeah, I think I can manage, Den. You’re not exactly huge.”

It’s not even a real compliment, not really, just the lack of an insult, but Dennis is glowing from it. “Oh,” he says. “Uh. Thanks.”

Rolling his eyes again, Charlie holds out his hand pointedly. Dennis takes it. There’s a pain in his bicep and a sharp ache in his shoulder, just for a second, and then he’s sitting next to Charlie on the floor of the boxcar.

“Oh,” Dennis says, blinking. “Alright then.”

Laughing softly, Charlie remarks, “Not for nothing, Dennis, but lifting you is like lifting a child. You are _tiny.”_

Glowing. Absolutely glowing. Dennis leans back and gestures at his abdomen. “Really? Cuz my stomach’s been a little bulge-y, lately, I’m…”

Taking a long drag off the joint, Charlie casually slides a hand from Dennis’s ribcage to his waistband, pausing in the middle to prod his fingers in gently. He withdraws his hand and shrugs. “Nope,” he says, smoke clouding the air between them. “Flat and firm. Feels just like Dee’s.”

Accepting the joint as it’s offered to him, Dennis mutters, “Be careful comparing me to my sister.”

“Oh, whatever, dude,” Charlie remarks. “Say what you want about her, but she’s skinny. You can’t deny that she’s skinny.”

“She’s skinny,” Dennis agrees. “All bony, bird, uh, all bird bones.” Pulling in the smoke carefully, he adds, “Why’ve you been touching her stomach, anyway?”

Charlie snorts. “Because she asked me the same exact question like two fuckin’ days ago, dude.”

“Shit,” Dennis laughs softly. “That fuckin’ twin shit. You really can’t escape it.”

Charlie shrugs. “I dunno. I wouldn’t have minded having a twin.”

“You want one?” Dennis gestures to him. “You can take mine. Seriously, she’s all yours. Let her call _you_ at 3am because she had a dream that Mom’s head on that little dog’s body appeared in her bathroom and called her a butterface. And she calls you crying, because that’s the nicest thing Mom’s head has ever called her.”

“Okay, _yikes._ For a number of reasons. But that’s the thing, though,” Charlie says. “You guys went through the same stuff together. Nobody went through the same shit as me. When I realize shit like that, I don’t have anybody to call.”

The joint’s spent, but Dennis fumbles a cigarette out of his jacket pocket and lights it. “I _didn’t_ go through the same shit as Dee, though,” Dennis states, “Cuz my mom loved me, and would never say the kind of stuff to me that she’d say to her.”

Dennis breathes out smoke towards the pinkish sky. “Nah, she’d just say shit like, ‘oh, Dennis, I love you so much that if you moved far away from me, I’d kill myself.’”

Charlie’s eyes go wide. “Aw, shit, man, my mom used to say that too!”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Charlie nods. “She’d say it really nicely, y’know, but she’d say it. Dude, she made me so afraid to even leave Philly that I didn’t for like, _ever.”_

“Damn,” Dennis mutters, handing the cigarette over to him. “I never realized that was the reason for all that.” He bumps him lightly on the shoulder, “But hey, look, man, both our moms said the same messed up shit to us - that just goes to show you, people _have_ gone through the same shit as you, even if it’s not like, _exactly_ the same shit with the same exact people, you know?”

Charlie nods. “Yeah, I guess that’s kinda true.”

Dennis’s phone goes off in his pocket. He fishes it out.

MAC: _omfg_ _Dee thru up @ me :( :( :(_

“She threw up _at_ him?” Charlie reads over his shoulder.

“I’d assume that’s just Mac’s weird text speak, but then again, it’s Dee,” Dennis laughs. “She’s not above using vomit as a weapon.”

“Gross,” Charlie snorts.

“Hey, she’s your sister,” Dennis teases.

Shaking his head, Charlie laughs, “Nah, I’ll take a refund. Gimme a raincheck.”

Furrowing his brow, Dennis remarks, “Those are two very different things.”

“Either or,” Charlie shrugs.

MAC: _checkin in a gain ---- goingn back 2 ourplace 2 get an new shrit_

“What now?”

“He’s going back to our place to get a shirt that hasn’t been puked on,” Dennis explains.

Charlie finishes the cigarette and snubs it out against the outside of the train. “Tell him to just borrow one of mine.”

Dennis texts back, “ _Charlie says to borrow his_.”

MAC: _ummm no1 has don launndry h,ere in like 10 yrs so... no_

Barely stifling a laugh, Dennis replies, “He says none of yours are clean, dude. Do you ever do laundry?”

Charlie scoffs. “There’s not a single shirt in that apartment that’s not clean enough to wear.”

“Yeah, I’m not gonna tell him that you think that,” Dennis says, putting the phone away again. “That’ll just upset him more, I think.”

Charlie hums, probably in agreement, and then hops down. He looks up at Dennis, squinting slightly in the dimming sunlight. He squints one eye a little more than the other. It’s endearing as shit.

He offers Dennis a hand. “Need a lift down, princess?” he asks.

Well, that’s less endearing. “Fuck off,” Dennis mutters, but he lands exactly wrong and his ankle smarts because of it. He can’t hold in the wince.

“Ah, fuck, dude,” Charlie’s at his side instantly, all mocking gone from his tone and swiftly replaced by concern. “You okay?”

Waving him away, Dennis replies, “Yeah, man, just gotta walk it off. Where to?”

Gesturing at the tracks ahead of them, Charlie says, “Where else?”

Sighing, Dennis shuffles along next to him. “God, I’m glad I’m not a train. Walking on tracks is boring as shit.”

Charlie squeezes his elbow. “Nearly there, bud. Hang in there.”

//

The tracks keep taking them into worse and worse parts of town. Dennis would’ve initially assumed he’d be relieved to finally be done walking, but when Charlie says, “We’re here,” and takes a sharp turn off the tracks and towards a street full of decrepit, crumbling, graffiti-covered abandoned buildings, Dennis’s first thought is _this kid’s going to get me fucking stabbed._

There’s a steep embankment to climb up, and Dennis is starting to understand why Charlie was able to pull him up so easily before. On top of all the bar work, if all of Charlie’s adventures are this physical, it’s got to be even better than a gym membership. A gym membership you actually _use._

As soon as they’re on top of the embankment, Dennis glances out over the landscape, and immediately spots it. “Goddammit, Charlie, is that the goddamn bridge?”

Charlie holds up his hands, “Okay, yes, but that’s not where we’re going.” Dennis gestures for Charlie to continue talking. “When Frank brings me to the bridge, sometimes I kinda don’t…” Charlie shrugs. “It’s whatever. So I’ve started checking out some of these dead buildings and stuff to kill time while Frank’s busy. Nobody really minds, there’s nobody really out here anymore.”

He’s eerily correct; there’s not a soul on the streets but the noticeable, palpable _lack_ of people is almost scarier, because that just means Dennis is absolutely sure they’re all huddled in these burnt-out, boarded-up houses and long-abandoned storefronts, watching them, unblinking, waiting to make their move. Dennis picks up the pace a little, keeping close to Charlie’s side, not wanting to get left behind for even a moment. He resists the urge to latch onto Charlie’s arm like a scared child.

The sign outside the place Charlie eventually stops at towers over the nearby shops, making Dennis wonder how he didn’t see it sooner. It’s in the shape of a rocket ship, the red and blue neon still visible after years of being left dim. The outlines of flames shooting out the back are less visible, but still there if you look hard enough.

“Launch Zone Pizza & Games,” Dennis reads aloud.

Pointing up at the sign, Charlie states, “The flames used to flash like it was taking off. It was neat.”

Dennis frowns. “Wait, how did you…” But Charlie’s walking up to the door of the building before Dennis can ask. The building itself is just a simple rectangular building, painted entirely black. Some of the black paint is chipping, showing the raw red brick underneath.

“There used to be this real big, light-up rocket ship on top of the building, too, but they took that down when they closed,” Charlie remarks. “I guess it was a hazard or something, I dunno. Kinda surprised they even bothered, honestly, considering all the stuff they just left inside, but whatever.”

“Inside?” Dennis echoes. “People can still go inside?”

Shrugging, Charlie admits, “Probably not legally, no, but no one’s caught me yet.” Catching Dennis’s worried look, Charlie amends, “There’s no one around _to_ catch me, Den, I’m telling you: this place is a ghost town. It feels like being alone in your own apartment. No one’s around to judge.”

Reaching into one of his ridiculously deep jacket pockets, Charlie withdraws an unbent paper clip and crouches down slightly to work the lock.

“You know how to pick locks?” Dennis asks.

“I guess,” Charlie says, laughing softly. “I just kinda jam this in there and wiggle it around until I hear a click. I don’t really know what I’m doing, so sometimes it takes a little while.”

Almost just to contradict him, the lock clicks open. Charlie throws up his hands, a triumphant grin on his face. Just endearing as all shit. Dennis can’t help but smile back.

“Alright,” Charlie says, pushing the door open. The ancient hinges creak, seemingly just for ambience. Dennis takes a tentative step inside.

The room smells like mildew and dead leaves. The only light is coming in from a few busted windows in the line of thin windows all along the ceiling, the remaining windows tinted pitch black. Dennis fishes out his phone, turns on the flashlight and casts it around the room, starting with the navy blue carpeting emblazoned with neon planets, spaceships, astronauts, little green men, and so on. He tilts the phone up slowly, revealing a booth built to resemble a ticket counter at an airport, but space themed.

“Oh, that was the hostess stand,” Charlie explains, coming up behind him. “It was this gimmick where they’d act like you were buying a ticket to get on a rocket ship.”

“How do you know all this?” Dennis asks him.

Shrugging, Charlie replies, “Used to come here as a kid. Mac did too, sometimes. We’d have all our birthday parties here, but I came here by myself a few times too.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I mean, you can’t go on any of the rides or anything without buying your, y’know ticket to the rocket first,” he gestures at the host stand, “but you can play the games in the waiting area. Well, you need money to actually play them, but some of them had playable demo modes. Well, a couple of them did. Zookeeper did.” He points to the other side of the room they’re in. “Those were over there.”

Dennis shines the light in the designated direction. It’s an empty half-circle room, certain areas with the markings of clearly having been home to large, rectangular objects in the past. There’s a mural on the wall made to look like a vintage ad — a smiling, 60s-style cartoon woman sitting cheerfully on the side of a UFO and eating a slice of pizza, dangling her feet into the vacuum of space.

“This room kinda sucks, though,” Charlie admits. “They did pretty good clearing this one out, probably ‘cause it’s right by the door. The further you go, the more shit they left. Some of the rides are like, fully intact.”

“Rides?” Dennis echoes.

Charlie grins, “Yeah, man! There’s so much cool stuff in this place, oh my god. I’m so excited to show it to you.”

Darting off almost too fast for Dennis to keep up, Charlie walks over to the opposite side of the flat wall of the half-circle room and approaches what Dennis had thought was just a plain wall but casting the light down to follow Charlie as he crouches, Dennis sees a cutout in the shape of a cloud. Along the floor going through the cutout is a miniature set of train tracks, about a quarter of the size of the ones they’d walked along to get here.

“There was this little, like, roller coaster looking train with the cars all shaped like rocket ships,” Charlie explains. He gestures at the cloud shape, “That was supposed to be the smoke, like it was taking off. Or maybe just like you’re shooting off into the clouds, I was never quite sure.”

“Either one makes sense,” Dennis remarks. “Is the train gone now?”

“I think it’s in there, actually,” Charlie says, pointing at a panel, “But I could never get that open. It used to sorta,” He lifts his hand to indicate the panel going up, “ _Schoop!_ And then the train would come out.” Charlie shrugs. “None of the rides really work anymore, though, even the ones who still have all their pieces, so it’s not a huge deal. Here, follow me.”

Charlie crawls through the cloud opening. There’s really no way to keep the light on and crawl after him, so Dennis opts to just trust that Charlie knows where he’s going. He pockets the phone and crawls through the hole.

It’s pitch-black inside, none of the light from the broken windows able to make it into the enclosed space. He can only tell where he’s going from the rustling of Charlie crawling in front of him and the feeling of the fake railroad underneath his hands and knees. 

Charlie eventually directs him to stand; Dennis gets the flashlight on again and casts it around the room. Made to resemble a fifties diner, the walls are a faded white and the light keeps getting reflected right back at them, bouncing off all the chrome. The accents that aren’t white or chrome are a distinctive space-age blue.

Running his hand down the counter, lightly adjusting a hanging light, Charlie smiles fondly as he looks around. “This is more like it,” Charlie says, nostalgia thick in his voice. “This looks almost exactly how it used to.” He breathes in deeply. “Mmmm. I can still smell the pizza. Can you?”

Dennis sniffs the air. He furrows his brow, smelling only dust. “Hm... maybe?” He tries again and his brows raise; he’s not sure whether it’s actually there or the power of suggestion, but, “Oh, yeah, actually…”

Charlie’s beaming excitedly. He grabs Dennis’s elbow and pulls him over, leading him to a booth and gesturing for him to get in on the other side.

“Charlie, we can’t actually order,” Dennis says, his tone suggesting he’s fairly certain but also somewhat expectant of the possibility that a robot waiter’s about to roll up with a slice of pepperoni and mushroom, which just so happens to be Dennis’s favorite.

“No,” Charlie laughs, “No, that’s one part that’s not still here. But look, look,” he points out the window. “They tried to make it like you’re in a spaceship - I know, a rocket ship took you to a spaceship, the plot’s got some holes - but _look!”_

Dennis shines the flashlight out the little window and has to nod appreciatively. What must be the vast majority of the restaurant is just beyond the window. The little “diner” they’re in...Dennis would estimate it must be on about the third level of this weird little building they’re in. The ground floor is just below them. There’s a rollercoaster, which isn’t massive but still looks like it would’ve been pretty fun in its heydey, got a couple of twists towards the middle and everything, plus  a massive labyrinth of tubes to crawl through winding all throughout the space, a few large sculptures of space things (a meteor, a UFO, a crescent moon…) for kids to climb on, and a carousel that looks like a little Saturn you rode mini-UFOs around. There’s an absolutely massive ball pit just below them, an area with some carnival games, and off to one side, a large sun-shaped room with an “EXIT” sign over it that Dennis assumes must have been the gift shop.

“Wow,” Dennis breathes. “Holy shit, dude. My child self is really jealous that your child self got to come here.”

“Don’t be too jealous,” Charlie advises, “Child-me only made it this far, like, twice. Child-me spent way more time getting kicked out of the lobby.”

“They’d kick you out?” Dennis glances over at him. “But you were just a little kid.”

Charlie shrugs, still gazing out the window. “It wasn’t a huge deal. I was usually really dirty, and if some kid made me mad I’d like, growl and bite at them.” He laughs. “Those poor kids, man. Coming here with their families, wanting to play Zookeeper, and I’d just…” He mimes snapping viciously, then laughs again.

Dennis casts the light up to look at the ceiling of the big room just outside the window, and nods his approval at the dozens of large, hanging, seemingly glass five-point stars. “That’s neat,” Dennis says, pointing them out. “Those stars up there? I really like those.”

“Really?” Charlie’s bouncing in his seat like Dennis just said the exact right thing. “Aw, man, I’m so... _ahh!_ Okay.” He grins wide and then squirms out of the booth. “Come on, come on, follow me!”

Dennis is a little apprehensive but he follows along anyway. Charlie stops to point out to him, “Oh, yeah, see that there?” Dennis glances down and sees a round opening in the floor, right in the middle of the restaurant, covered by a slightly translucent green trapdoor. “That’s the portal down to the planet,” Charlie explains, then tilts his head to the side to offer the alternate explanation: “That’s a big twisty slide that drops you in that big ball pit down there.”

“Cool,” Dennis says. “Are we doing that?”

“We can,” Charlie offers. “There’s really not much to see down there, though. None of the rides work, but if you go through the ball pit you find some cool stuff. They, like, never cleaned it when it was open, let alone after it closed, so if you really look you can…”

“That’s okay,” Dennis says quickly. “What, uh, what did you wanna…”

“Oh!” Charlie grins that massive grin again. “Yes! Follow me!” He races to the back of the diner, to a door made to look like an airlock and marked “EMPLOYEES ONLY.” Charlie cranks the wheel and bashes his shoulder against the door, it creaks open with a sound like it _really_ doesn’t want to. The door leads to a very boring stairwell, compared to the rest of the restaurant. Plain concrete, no handles on the stairs even, and not a single space-themed object in sight.

“Up this way!” Charlie chirps and immediately begins scaling the steps, much more quickly than Dennis can keep up with. Charlie races past the beam of light, disappearing completely into the darkness, Dennis’s light occasionally finding him as he briefly catches up only to lose him again. Eventually Dennis has to stop to catch his breath, and Charlie gets away from him entirely.

The steps seem to go on for an eternity and Dennis is genuinely startled when he abruptly shines light on Charlie’s grinning face and still body standing in front of a door. “Turn off the light,” Charlie urges as Dennis just barely keeps from bowling him over.

“Why?” Dennis asks, regaining his footing.

Charlie shakes his head, but he’s still smiling. “C’mon, Dennis,” Charlie says, “just trust me, alright?” He holds out his hand. “I won’t let you get lost. I promise.”

Taking a long inhale through his nose, Dennis turns off the light, pockets the phone, and reaches out blindly into the darkness for Charlie’s hand. The warm, secure clutch of Charlie’s grip comes quickly. Dennis hears the distinct sound of an industrial door being opened, and then he’s being pulled forward into unfamiliar space.

The floor bobs slightly beneath Dennis’s feet and he stops, his shoulder tugging as Charlie keeps going without him for a moment before realizing. “What’s up?” Charlie asks.

“The floor moved,” Dennis states.”What…?”

“Yep,” Charlie replies, “the ground’s bouncy in here. Just walk normal, you’ll adjust to it. Come on.” He pulls gently on Dennis’s hand twice to urge him to move again, then keeps walking when he feels Dennis willingly come along.

Being led by Charlie’s hand across a bouncing floor through unrelenting, unfamiliar darkness has a certain dreamlike quality to it. It makes the possibilities of what this room is and where Charlie could be taking him seem to be far more vast than usual, and Dennis’s heart is thumping erratically in his chest.

Charlie stops; Dennis bumps into him a little. “Okay,” Charlie says, “you can turn the light on.” Dennis gets the phone back out, gets the light on and chokes out a little gasp as the first thing he sees is the top of the rollercoaster, many many feet down. The second thing he notices is that he appears to be standing on air.

“Jesus,” he yelps, grabbing onto Charlie by pure instinct, one arm around his neck, the other around his middle.

“Hey, easy,” Charlie soothes him, wrapping an arm around Dennis’s waist. “It’s okay. You’re safe. That’s why I didn’t want you to use the light.”

“Charlie, are you sure it’s safe?” Dennis asks. “Cuz it looks…”

“Yes,” Charlie says, his voice even and unbothered. “Yeah, Dennis, I promise. We’re up on the catwalk, right? Like in a theater?” He stares up at Dennis, his face very very close. Dennis can’t quite catch his breath. “Hey, okay, sit down. Sometimes it’s easier if you sit.” Charlie eases the two of them down to sit on the bouncy floor, but doesn’t force Dennis off of him, so Charlie kind of ends up half-sitting on Dennis’s lap, with the other half being Dennis sitting on his.

“See?” Charlie says, gesturing to the floor, which is made of hundreds of  intertwining metal wires, “It’s made of these really strong bouncy metal things. If one ever broke it’d be a huge lawsuit, so they’re not gonna break. I wouldn’t bring you up here if it wasn’t safe.”

Charlie moves both Dennis’s hand and Dennis’s phone to point the light towards the direction they came from. “See, there’s that little path over there? I didn’t want you to chicken out before you got past the path, cuz you have to cross that in order to get beneath the stars, and I really wanted to show you the stars.”

Charlie guides the light upward and sure enough, they’re less than foot now from the numerous glittering glass-like stars that Dennis had pointed out earlier. Up close they’re actually even cooler, almost like gemstones in the way they’re multifaceted, the light from the phone beaming off them in all directions, and without the perspective they seem genuinely countless.

“They’re lights,” Charlie explains. “Isn’t that cool? They were really bright. We probably couldn't even be up here with them on, I don’t think. It’d be so hot, and so bright, you’d probably die.”

“Wouldn’t be the worst way to go,” Dennis murmurs.

Charlie smiles at him, softly. “You know,” Charlie says, “I suppose it wouldn’t. It’d be sort of worth it, I guess. All the light, all that heat. I bet in spite of all that, it was still really beautiful up here. I think, if I knew how to get up here back when this place had power, I’d have turned on the lights and checked it out anyway.” There’s an odd, somber feeling to his words for a moment, but then he laughs softly, laughs it away. “Wouldn’t have brought you up here, though, cuz it wouldn’t have been safe, and like I said, I…”

“I would’ve done it,” Dennis insists, finding himself trying to get back to that weird somber feeling. “I’d come up here with the lights on with you.”

Charlie laughs again. “You’d come up here in all that light and heat and walk across these things all over again just to burn to death with me?”

For some reason it’s bothering Dennis that Charlie won’t take him seriously. “Yeah,” Dennis says. “I’d burn with you, man.”

The soft light of Dennis’s phone tilts to illuminate a group of stars a few feet over as Dennis drops his phone onto the strange ground and wraps his arms more firmly around Charlie’s warm, strong body. He waits to see if Charlie looks startled or uncomfortable but he’s just watching, quietly, waiting, and there’s a glimmer in his eyes that says he’s going to go along with whatever Dennis does next. There’s a part of Dennis that knows Charlie will go along with just about anything anyway, but his heart still starts hammering a little in his chest.

Up close, Charlie’s lashes are so long, and his eyes are so green. He’s gotten so used to Charlie’s face over the years, sometimes he forgets how much he likes it.  “Thanks for bringing me here,” Dennis says quietly.

Their faces are so close that Charlie can feel the vibrations of the words in his lips even before Dennis kisses him. It’s light, it’s chaste and it’s quick and it’s over before it’s really even happening but it’s the first time since high school that it’s happened when they weren’t drunk enough to pretend not to remember it the next day, and that definitely means something.

“You know,” Charlie says quietly, smiling slightly to himself and breaking any awkward silence that could’ve happened by saying it almost as soon as they’ve separated, “I was really hoping you’d do that.”

“So do it yourself, next time,” Dennis advises.

“Kiss myself next time?” Charlie asks, confused.

“No, you…” Dennis stops short of calling the dude he’s just finished kissing and hopefully going to resume kissing at any time any of the colorful names running through his head. “Kiss _me.”_

Charlie’s on top of him so fast, Dennis has to believe he’s genuinely never thought to do it until now. The creak of the metal wires is unnerving but Charlie’s swallowing up any worry Dennis could’ve had, kissing him hard, like, one-of-us-is-going-off-to-war hard, sliding a bold hand up underneath Dennis’s shirt, running gentle curious fingertips along the ridges of Dennis’s bony ribs and the tight muscles of his stomach. Dennis tries to flex but has to relax when Charlie’s fingers start to tickle the drawn-taut skin.

“Do you wanna go home?” Dennis asks as soon as they’re apart and Charlie nods before Dennis has even finished saying the question. Dennis retrieves his phone, flashlight still glowing, lying a few feet away.

MAC: _dude thias bet rly sucks waana callit of f?_ (39 min ago)

Dennis pockets the phone without answering.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> P L E A S E leave a comment if you read this, just let me know literally any thoughts you had at all whatsoever, it's absolutely the biggest motivation for me to write more and I also read your kind words on days I'm feel blue! <3

**Author's Note:**

> if you made it this far pretty please leave a comment! <3
> 
> (find me on tumblr: psychedelic-iridescent.tumblr.com)


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